


The Long Lonesome

by havisham



Category: Original Work
Genre: Bittersweet, Gen, Ghosts, Loneliness, POV First Person, The Vanishing Hitchhiker, Treat, Truckers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-18 11:47:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12387453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/pseuds/havisham
Summary: You see a lot of strange people on the road. Sometimes, you stop and offer some of them a ride.





	The Long Lonesome

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Prinzenhasserin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prinzenhasserin/gifts).



> I really wanted to work with your prompt about mixing the mundane with the supernatural, and this is the result. I hope you like it! :)

When I was a kid, my folks would take us kids on a lot of roadtrips. Well, I say roadtrips, but the fact was we moved around a lot, so it wasn’t like we were going home at the end of it. No town could be home, at least not for very long. During those long, long journeys, I would watch the countryside blur past me and look for them. 

The runner. I’ve seen the runner for as long as I can remember, just a figure in the corner of my eye. I never figured out if they were a man or a woman, but it never mattered much. The runner wasn’t even human, I knew that. They just were. And they just ran. Always besides the car, never stopping or getting tired. Even when I wouldn’t watch them, I always knew they were there. Beside me. 

Whenever my parents stopped the car, got off the highway, the runner would be gone, like they were just a figment of my imagination. Well, I guess they were, but they never felt like it. 

When I grew up and started trucking -- and so started taking these long road trips myself -- I would never see the runner. It’s with a sense of relief I tell you this. I didn’t think I’d be able to be as calm about it at twenty-eight as I had been at eight. My work requires me to zig-zag through the country, mostly going on a north-south direction. I didn’t mind the work, really, I love it. I was never much of a talker, growing up, and all those hours of silence never bothered me none. 

But there was no denying it -- it did get lonely, especially when the radio fizzled out and was replaced by static and then silence. This one night it was raining when I started off, and kept at it. I was going up a highway that threaded through the mountain, the way lit by nothing more than my headlights. It I began to think that I should’ve stopped at the motel fifty miles back instead of pushing on as I had been determined to do. I’d be no good to anyone dead. 

As I pondered stopping, I saw something in the corner of my eye. It seemed too dim to be a light, and went on too long to be a sign. I ignored it -- it was late and I was tired. Of course I was seeing things. I decided then and there to pull over at the next motel I came across, my travel-time be damned. 

Suddenly, the radio came on again, playing a country-western tune I’d never heard of. Though the lyrics were garbled, I felt cheered to hear another human voice, even if I couldn’t understand what they were saying. The time seemed to melt after that. The dark was the only thing that stayed. 

I was almost drifting into sleep when I saw flashing lights ahead. Shaking my head, hoping to loosen up the sleepiness that clung to me, I slowed to a stop. A patrolman came to my window, rain dripping from his hat. “Bridge’s washed up ahead,” he told me, nodding to the darkness in front of him. “You’ll need to take the detour from Westbridge on to Greenville.” 

“That’ll set me back at least two hours,” I protested, but he shrugged, indifferent to my plight. Well, I wasn’t the one standing there in the rain, I supposed. The way out from Westbridge was a narrow mountain road that made the skinny highway I’d been traveling on seem like an interstate. 

“ _... I was only twenty four hours from Tulsa,_ ” the radio warbled when I saw something go past my car. Something white and thin and human-shaped. Something that looked like it was running. “ _Ah, only one day away from your arms..._ ” 

With a jerk, I pulled off the road and parked the truck. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I was shaking, my nerves rattled. I hadn’t seen what I thought I’d seen, I assured myself. The runner wasn’t a real thing. The runner couldn’t have followed me through all those years and up a mountain. The cabin was too hot, too stuffy. I had to get out for a bit, breathe some fresh air. Leaving the truck running, I opened the door and got out. 

Outside, the cool air hit my face like a slap. The rain had dwindled into a fine mist and the moon was just visible against a bank of clouds. I looked out to the landscape around me, the old mountains, as old as anywhere else, and the skeletal trees raking at the sky. 

I heard a noise and looked for the source. It was then I saw them -- a human-shaped figure that had crept near without me even noticing. I blinked, but she was still there. 

“Hey,” said a soft, raspy voice, “could you give me a ride?” 

I blinked again and the figure resolved itself into a person. Definitely a person, and not something out of my nightmares. Her face was pinched and white from the cold. She wore a black hoodie with some dirty, grey jeans.

She didn’t look like she could hurt me.

Now, I don’t mean to brag or nothing, but I’m a pretty big woman. I can take care of myself, and take care of any assholes who think that just being a woman on the road is asking for trouble. 

“Where are you headed?” I asked, trying to sound more friendly than I felt. I didn’t want to give this person, who had appeared from nowhere and scared the shit out of me, any kind of ride. But at the same time, loner though I was, I was starved for some company. The two impulses were at war with each other and I tried to focus on my next move. 

She shrugged. “I’m trying to get to the city.” 

“Which city?” I asked, puzzled. 

She looked a little lost, like she hadn’t thought so far ahead. “Any, I guess. They told me to go the city.” 

“Who are they?” 

She shook her head, suddenly impatient. “Are you gonna help me or just ask questions? I can wait for the next driver.” 

“The next guy could be a serial killer.” 

“So could you,” she said, with a curl of her lips. She walked over to my truck and waited for me to unlock the door. Helpless to stop her, I followed behind. 

We didn’t talk again for the first hour of the journey. Somehow, my fatigue was gone. Instead, I felt wary of the presence slouched in the passenger side seat, looking out the window. When I cleared my throat, she didn’t turn her head. 

“Ah, so where are you from?” I asked. “You still in school or something?” 

She gave me a long and contemptuous look that I did my best to smile at.

“... You new at this?” she asked me. 

“New at what?” I replied. 

“Seeing ghosts,” she said and disappeared from her seat. 

I swore and slammed on the brakes, nearly pulling myself off the highway as I did so. I parked on the shoulder and tried to get my breath back. When my heart had finally stopped beating like crazy, I began to search the cabin to find that troublesome hitchhiker. I couldn’t find her anywhere. She truly had disappeared. 

It could be I’d fallen asleep and dreamed up the whole thing. I should just radio in and tell them that I was done for the night and leave it at that. But something in me rebelled at that. It felt like giving in. 

Fortunately, there was just enough room to turn the truck around and head back to the spot where I’d picked up the hitchhiker. I wasn’t surprised to see her standing exactly where I’d found her before, black hoodie pulled down to stop the rain. 

“You’re kinda dumb,” she said when I’d rolled down the windows. 

“Hey, shut up, don’t insult me,” I said. “I’m trying to help you. Did you get killed around here?” 

She pointed to a spot maybe a ten feet away. “A car hit me. Didn’t stop. Now I can’t ever leave.” 

“Well, get in,” I said, “We’ll try, anyway.” 

It didn’t take much to persuade her to get back into the truck. It was still miserable outside, after all. I didn’t really understand why the rain would bother a ghost, but it obviously did -- but once inside, she told me flatly that it wouldn’t work. 

“I’ve been at that spot for twenty years,” she said, leaning back against the seat. “Even when someone stops and gives me a ride, it’s no good. I always come back to where I started. Every time.” 

“Well, okay,” I said, starting the truck and carefully turning it around on the narrow mountain road, “I get that. But how about not thinking about that for a bit?” 

“What else should I think about?” 

“So, like ghosts, huh? Are real? So that means there’s something after death, right?” 

“I don’t know,” said the ghost. “I’ve never seen -- well, that’s not true. Sometimes drivers will have -- stuff hanging on to them. I guess they could be people. Or were people. I didn’t like riding with drivers like that. They weren’t -- good.” 

“I don’t have anything like that on me, do I?” I asked anxiously, glancing backwards despite myself. 

“Nah,” said the ghost. “Well. Yours hasn’t caught up with you yet.” 

“That,” I said, licking my dry lips, “is the definition of cold comfort.” 

We kept talking like that as I drove. I tried to ask her about her name, where she’d come from, how’d she ended up in that lonely stretch of road to begin with. But every question had the same answer -- “I don’t know,” she’d say, looking sad. Or: “I can’t remember.”

“Well, it’s fine,” I said, noticing for the first time the streaks of blood-red clouds against the purple sky. It would be dawn soon. And what’s more -- we were just twenty miles away from Greenville. When I pointed this out to my passenger, I got a blank look in reply. 

“That means you got away,” I pointed out, helpfully. 

“I could still disappear,” she warned me. 

“If you had to, you would’ve done that hours ago,” I said comfortably. “I guess I exorcised you or something? Or freed you, more like.” 

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” she said with a snort. 

(But she didn’t disappear.) 

*

Finally, rolling into the stop I had in Greenville, I nodded to her. “Well, there’s your city. I’ll see you.” 

She looked out of the window suspiciously and then back to me. “What am I -- I mean, what I am going to do out here?” 

“I don’t know,” I said, “you’ll have to figure that out on your own, I guess.” 

It was then my radio burst into life. It was Annie from headquarters, demanding to know where I had been all night. 

“Calm down, Annie,” I said, “I’ve been en route the whole time. Had to take a long detour when the bridge to Westbridge washed out.” 

“You’ll be lucky if Sal doesn’t fire you, Nina.” 

“Huh? Fire me? Then who’s he gonna dump all these terrible routes onto?”

Annie sighed. “Well, I’m glad you’re not dead, anyway.” 

I looked around. My passenger was gone. The air around me felt pleasant -- warm, almost, and smelled faintly of cinnamon. I hoped, wherever she was, she had found peace. “I’m glad too,” I said, more to myself than to Annie. 

*

I’ve ended up doing this a couple more times since then. It happened often enough that I’d come to think of it as a sort of a part-time job -- exorcising ghosts. I don’t do anything fancy or elaborate -- I don’t wave a crucifix at them. Mostly, I drive. I listen. I get them to where they need to be. 

I don’t think much about God or the afterlife -- none of my passengers ever seemed to have a clear idea about that either. It seemed that death was a much of a state of confusion as life had been. But I know now that there was something there. 

I think, from before, the runner was one of the lost, and they sensed that I could see them. They tried so hard to get me to stop, to help them. I wish I could do it too, now that I knew more of what was happening. 

Well, that’s enough about me. How about you? Where are you headed? 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my beta, S! All remaining mistakes are mine.


End file.
